Just got Utiger et al.'s paper (Russian Journal of Herpetology, Vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 105-124) from the library. Looking at page 115, their fig. 4, strict consensus tree. I find no evidence that the ratsnakes are polyphyletic. All of the species they studied form an unresolved polytomy, with the exception of the North American species of ratsnakes, kingsnakes, gopher snakes and glossy snakes. This node has low bootstrap value; it is poorly supported. Therefore it appears that all of the species they studied are simply part of an unresolved polytomy. In other words, their analysis largely failed to tell us anything about the branching order of the many genera they recognize. To splinter Elaphe on the basis of such a poorly resolved phylogeny is simply scientifically untenable. Arnold Kluge, when he was faced with a similarly unresolved polytomy in his erycine paper, dumped all of the species in the polytomy into the same genus, Eryx. I criticized him for doing that and said that he should have maintained the taxonomic status quo. Utiger et al., too, should have maintained the status quo. Instead, they named 2 new genera and resurrected a number of old ones, thus creating taxonomic chaos by the truckload. All of the name changes they propose, including the proposed transfer of the North American species of Elaphe into Pantherophis and Pseudelaphe, are unnecessary, destructive and scientifically untenable.

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